48" Stick-and Tissue Blenheim IV/Bolingbroke IVT - Page 2 (2024)

Aug 07, 2019, 07:28 AM

• #29

Steve85

Thread OP

RC Groups wanted to know if I really, really wanted to add to this thread, what with it being dead for years now, and I really, really did, so Steve’s Bristol Blenheim/Bolingbroke thread has risen from the dead and is now lurching around, zombie-like for the entertainment of any souls brave enough to watch!

Seriously, while this design has spent a few years in suspended animation, it was ready to be built when I put it on ice, and it was never very far from the front of my mind. Life intruded, however, and some much more important things imposed themselves (looking after ageing parents and “adulting” children), and these, coupled with self-inflicted distractions (cutting kits for other folks, deciding to go back to work on occasional contracts, and a few home renovations) meant that I put the Blenheim/Bolly on the back burner along with most model-building. Last summer, I took a kit I’d cut for myself of Mike Roach’s Sopwith Triplane on vacation, and thoroughly enjoyed building it free of the usual distractions. This summer, I resolved to do the same, but set my sights on the much more ambitious Bolly. I printed a copy of my plan, and pored over it while my CNC router cut a kit for me. I had originally intended to offer kits of the Bolly for sale, and while that may never come to pass, it was interesting to look at my plan with a fresh pair of eyes and try to remember how I’d intended the model to be built. I have new respect for anyone who designs and markets a kit now, and a much better understanding of the challenge of drawing a plan that is self-explanatory!

Building a kit on while on vacation adds its own particular challenges. I know where everything is in my shop, and have huge stashes of building materials. Taking a kit to the cottage 300 km from anything resembling a hobby shop means thinking hard about what’s going to be needed every step of the way, and then packing it all into a box that’ll fit in the space budget allocated for it in the car. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something crucial, but only time will tell.

Anyone who’s ever built a Guillow’s warbird will immediately recognize the classic half-crutch fuselage construction, so after rustling up some spare ceiling tiles to act as a building board on the cottage kitchen table, I set to work pinning the vertical keels in place, with a sheet of parchment paper from the kitchen baking drawer protecting my plans. Fuselage formers (most of them, anyway) were next, CA’d in place with the help of a little drawing square to ensure they stayed vertical while the glue set. The belly pan/bomb bay area will eventually be cut away to form a removable hatch, and there are a couple of half-height formers that will serve as endcaps for the hatch that were left off along with a couple of formers in the tailwheel area for later installation.

Side keels were next, built over the fuselage top view and then glued into their slots in the formers. The wing saddle will go between the upper and lower side keels, and the lower side keel also serves as the seat for the belly pan/bomb bay hatch. The upper edge of the hatch gets its own side keel, and I used parchment paper between it and the lower fuselage keel to ensure the CA didn’t stick them together. The two reserved half-formers were now also glued in place, with their own parchment paper glue shields preventing them from sticking to their neighbouring fuselage formers. Once this was done, the half-fuselage was ready to be carefully unpinned and pried off the building board. The builder was rewarded for his labours with a cold, home-brewed IPA, and the first opportunity to fly the embryonic fuselage around the kitchen, making airplane noises until the missus wondered from the sitting room what all the fuss was about. Women.

Steve